The Francois Truffaut Walk of Fame

There are some people who you just know will go on to have good lives even when you're a child and know nothing much about living.

Who knew that Jacqueline Bisset's given name was Winifred? Or that Harold Pinter performed 'Krapp's Last Tape' at the National Theatre in London? Not I.

Why had Pinter omitted the banana? The actor Patrick Magee, in an earlier production of the play, the one said to be the closest to Beckett's heart and therefore his favorite, had peeled and eaten multiple bananas.

Who knows?

Who knows why every word my 95-year-old aunt reads out loud sounds funny, even when she reads something as old as The Lord's Prayer or as new as Thomas Fuller? Is it because she can no longer make any sense out of what she's reading, or is it because she's hearing for the first time the absurdity of language and is wondering why it had played such a central role in her life?

Reading out loud, her voice--tentative and sure--projects that place in any true narrative endeavor where the author finally admits he or she is engaged in an act destruction, not creation.

It becomes apparent, while watching an old Truffaut movie last night, that a large part of the magic of film derives from the viewer not wanting or needing to know how a film is made.